[dylan604]

If it was a scan of an actual document embedded into a webpage, then maybe we can say it's an acceptable format. But having some designer do a layout and then save it as a rasterized image so that it scales beyond original size so that it lowers the legibility of the text, then no, it is not a reasonable method.

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

> scan of an actual document embedded into a webpage

I see, download the HTML as provided by the server at the time. Then provide that separately and include the relevant text in the article. Yeah, that would be a better method.

[dylan604]

We've had full page documents as PDFs for a long long time now. This isn't new. It's just someone wanting to be fancy/trendy/whatevs without consideration that people use the web in ways other than the designers do.

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

I’m thinking about it similar to how American law enforcement is required to store digital evidence, in particular the requirement that it’s “unmodified”. Per my understanding, that would disqualify, e.g., a .jpg that was converted to a .png from being submitted as evidence.

Obviously a journalist isn’t law enforcement but a good one will still gather and retain evidence. They also don’t necessarily need to be as strict as prosecutors but it’s a good standard to try to emulate. To that end, a PDF wouldn’t do.

I wouldn’t doubt that these assumptions are overly generous to the reality of their evidence-gathering; it’s a bit idealistic and the implementation is lacking, at best. But if that’s their point behind the screenshot instead of inline text, I still think they’re coming from the right place. They mostly just have a bad implementation.

But at the same time, I get where you’re coming from, even assuming more responsible intentions. A bit more applied critical thinking in such a context likely results in a better implementation. That is largely why the above assumptions seem so generous.